Wealth and politics in America; Ronald Reagan and the FBI; Israel’s conditions for peace

How the rich get richer

Re “Fat-cat politics,” Opinion, Dec. 12

John Adams feared an “aristocratic despotism.” That is exactly what we are experiencing in America today.

Andrew Trees points out that over a 25-year period ending in 2004, the richest 1% of Americans enjoyed a 176% increase in their income compared with 6% by those in the bottom fifth. In Congress, Trees notes, 261 of the 535 members are millionaires.

How can millionaires relate to normal families getting by on $50,000 a year?

No wonder President Obama was blindsided by the anger of those offended by his compromise with Republicans preserving the Bush tax cuts. These people live in a different world.

Paul McElroy

Laguna Woods

Reagan and the FBI

Re “Was Reagan a secret snitch?” Opinion, Dec. 12

John Meroney basically answers his own question about whether Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI snitch. Yes, he was a secret snitch.

The FBI had him listed as a “confidential informant.” That’s code for snitch. And it was kept a secret for all of Reagan’s political career; that means he was secret snitch.

How many innocent people in the Hollywood trade unions were falsely accused of being “commies” by secret snitches like Reagan and had their careers and lives destroyed in the witch hunts of that era?

We don’t have the lists of names that Reagan gave the FBI, so we don’t the know answer to that question. What we do know is that the FBI’s hunt was a cover for attacking organized labor. Of course, we know what Reagan thought about unions.

Dale Jennings

Boulevard, Calif.

Meroney’s article about Reagan and the McCarthy era is more notable in what it says about Reagan’s involvement in the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild and the stagehands union.

You mean Reagan, the most admired Republican ever, was supportive of a union for his profession? Please don’t tell today’s anti-union Republicans, as it would destroy his hero status.

Jay Slosar

Newport Beach

History is always a work in progress. Certainly there is room for a Reagan admirer like Meroney to put his spin on the president’s years in Hollywood as a commie fighter. I do wish I could look 100 years into the future and see what historians are saying then about Reagan’s place in the sordid history of far-right-wing America and the necessity, or lack of necessity, of the Cold War.

Roderick Gates

El Cajon

Israel’s desire for peace

Re “Who’s stopping the peace process?” Opinion, Dec. 14

Danny Ayalon’s Op-Ed article is a classic case of blaming the victim.

The Palestinian people are willing to accept a state on a small percentage of their former territory, but they expect Israel to show goodwill by stopping the expansion of Jewish-only settlements in their future state. The settlements are not a “red herring,” as Ayalon states, but the crux of the problem.

As long as Israel continues to encroach on Palestinian land, there can be no peace.

Ruth Shapin

Orange

Kudos to Ayalon for having the chutzpah to reiterate Israel’s position regarding peace prospects with Palestinians. At least one person has the nerve to show that Israel has moved up one notch from having the world’s worst public relations.

At least Jordan and Egypt had the courage to make peace with the Jewish state. The jury is out on whether the Palestinians will waste another 60 years coming to the same conclusion.

Richard Bernstein

Los Angeles

Shame on The Times for printing this propaganda. It is a veritable compendium of falsehoods. Israel hopes that by telling the big lie often enough, it will become the truth.

One of the more outrageous parts deserves mentioning: “Isn’t it time that the Palestinians are asked directly and openly if they are prepared to make any concessions?”

The answer is no, they will never give up any of their rights. They know that the tide is turning against Israel, and by remaining steadfast, they will ultimately achieve justice.

Richard Herman

Costa Mesa

In the classroom

Re “Ask the classroom experts what makes a good teacher,” Column, Dec. 14

Sandy Banks discusses findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Those findings showed that student responses to the Tripod Project surveys that I have spent the last decade developing are robust predictors of effective teaching.

The recent controversies in Los Angeles make it very important to be clear. Banks quotes me as saying, “I think students’ evaluations ought to be made public in schools.” This could be misinterpreted.

The purpose of the project is to provide educators with multiple ways of measuring teaching effectiveness. Using several well-conceived measures represents a major advance over current practices in most districts. So evaluation measures cannot be completely private if they are to serve their purpose.

Neither, however, should they be completely public. I would strongly oppose such a practice if anyone were to recommend it.

Ronald F. Ferguson

South Easton, Mass.

The writer is a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and founder of the Tripod Project.

Insecurity

Re “ ‘Dumb’ passwords blamed for consumer data breaches,” Business, Dec. 14

Simple passwords, or the same password used in many places, are a bad idea, but that has nothing to do with the “data breaches” you report.

The fact that data were stolen from several companies is completely the fault of those companies. They have an absolute responsibility to protect the data of their customers.

Consumers should assume their data might get stolen somewhere, and a simple password can worsen the impact of that single exposure. Another problem is that many companies require you to create a user ID and password, even if you are just doing a single transaction with them.

But this “blame the consumer” line is just an attempt to blame consumers for the companies’ failures.

Dan Kronstadt

Sunland

Hidden shame

Re “Young, gay, homeless — and largely hidden,” Dec. 12

The all-too-familiar sight of a homeless person is America’s shame. The huge homeless population in Los Angeles is something we have all become complacent with and readily ignore.

Why should it matter if

a person is gay or straight, black or white, old or young and on and on?

It seems we are not happy in this country unless we slap a label on someone, put them in a box and file them away with a quick dismissal as if they just don’t matter at all. They all matter; they all suffer; they all need so much help to get out of this terrible, endless cycle.

This crucial issue is always swept under the bushes, much like the people who are out there hiding in shame.

This important article is an eye-opener and essential to finding a way to end this epidemic or at least finding solutions that actually work.

Frances Terrell Lippman

Sherman Oaks

DWP outage

Re “Mayor picks an outsider for DWP,” Dec. 15

You want to know why there’s trouble at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? Because city politicians handle the DWP as a political football and piggy bank.

Since 2005, the mayor has appointed six general managers. No organization can function effectively with that kind of revolving-door leadership.

In the 25 years I spent there, we had four general managers, three who were career employees and trained engineers and administrators.

Yes, there are problems at the DWP, but show me any ship that could sail straight with six different captains at the helm in five years.

Harvey Lutske

Los Angeles

On Holbrooke

Re “His region splits on Holbrooke,” Dec. 15

Afghans may have considered Richard C. Holbrooke out of touch and combative, while Pakistanis praised his efforts to forge understanding between these two countries, as your story relates.

But Holbrooke’s overall career as a diplomat is laudable, especially the compassion and courage he displayed helping thousands of refugees during the Vietnam conflict.

Holbrooke’s credo when it came to facing down bigotry and indifference matched that of the fictitious British officer’s words uttered in a dramatization of the 1947 social upheaval in India: “I don’t hate in the plural.”

Mike Nally

Westminster